To plugin or not to plugin, that is the question.

So I've stated numerous times on these forums that I'm a JS noob. However, I got to looking at the code for a plugin I work with a lot and found a lot of things that could be 'improved' or removed in order to fix certain issues I was having.

I decided that a complete rewrite of the code would likely be the best course of action, since it has an MIT license, and I'd look at releasing a 'simpler' version. So, in this plugin creation quest, I first looked for a boilerplate that would make getting started easier and found something that would work in the plugin SDK.

The first task would be to change a number of variables from 'myCompany' to something less generic. That task accomplished, I decided to install my very basic plugin and see what happened.

I was not happy. Because I didn't get all the variables changed, the plugin promptly crashed C3 when trying to load. I was greeted with this HUGE red screen with a HUGE list of errors. Ok, so I goofed that up, let's try again... or so I thought.

I quickly discovered that the only way to remove my faulty plugin was to go into the developer console and clear out all of the local information for C3. This also meant that all of my preferences and all of my other installed plugins got wiped. Grrrr.

Ok, so there must be an easier way to do this. Ah hah! Developer mode! Ummm wait a minute.

In order to develop a plugin I was going to have to set up my own web server?????

Ok, so I've set up LAMP stacks in the past and getting them configured properly is a pain in the...*

And then, I'd have to get the CORS correct and even then, Chrome may throw a fit if it's mixed content and then, I was going to have to tinker around with addon metadata... uhhh... hold on here.

Now I realize that the whole purpose of this is to prevent re-zipping an addon every time you make a change and reinstalling it. And were I to take up serious plugin development, yea, I'd probably jump through these hoops. But right now, I'm just toying with the idea and having to completely clear the browser cache because I goofed one line of code seems a bit extreme. It occured to me that a checkbox on the error screen, "disable this plugin on next load" would keep me from having to wipe out all of my settings and still let me tinker with writing plugins without having to dive in head first.

So I'm wondering, has anyone else considered creating a plugin, taken a look at the hoops you'd have to jump through, and came to the conclusion I did?... oh the hell with that.

It will also load existing plugins for you to start with (and comes with some templates.) It includes a webserver built in for developer mode. It creates .c3addon for release. It makes everything so much better when creating a plugin. It even creates templates for doing c2 conversions (you usually need to do more JS work to complete the conversion, due to SDK changes for c3 runtime.)

I wish that Nepeo or other mods would sticky the c3IDE thread in this forum, it's so useful for plugin development.

Fengist Looks like your on an old version of the documentation, I didn't even know there was a copy on the Scirra site. You can use safe mode to load the editor without any addons, then delete the addon using the addon menu.

Fengist Looks like your on an old version of the documentation, I didn't even know there was a copy on the Scirra site. You can use safe mode to load the editor without any addons, then delete the addon using the addon menu.

Years ago I ran a site that was a 'search engine' for MUD's (Multi-User Dungeons). One of the things I did was to keep track of all the things people searched for and rank them on an inside page. Over the span of a week or so I noticed the hits on my site went through the roof. When I got to digging I found out why. On that list of top searches, someone had searched for Pokemon porn. Google snagged that and within a week, it ranked my site as the top destination for Pokemon porn.